Tuesday, November 8, 2011

"Why is Dmitri Shostakovich the worst composer of the XXth century? Because he is the worst imitator of the twentieth century, imitator of Prokofiev and of Mahler and of Satie and of whoever else's scores he'd lay his paws on; and because his imitations are of poor quality, coarse, vulgar, thick, unimaginative, repetitive and narrow-minded: an artificious world he fabricated, imitated of the nineteenth century, in the image of the artificious society constructed by the Bolshevists."

"You have successfully described John Williams!!!" - Best DSCH joke.

"I think that it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat, as in [Mussorgsky's] Boris Godunov. It's as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, 'Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,' and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, 'Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.' What kind of apotheosis is that? You have to be a complete oaf not to hear that." - Testimony

Under the premise of only using recordings that are available on both Spotify UK and USA, my choices were limited, nevertheless I managed to sort out a list of great Shostakovich recordings: Haitink's 4th on CSO Resound, Bernstein's 5th with NYPO (helter-skelter tempo), Previn's 8th with LSO, Rostropovich's 14th with his wife Galina Vishnevskaya as the soprano, and Ormandy's 15th with The Philadelphia Orchestra. For the string quartets (press Ctrl/CMD+F and input string quartet to browse), I put in more than 10 different ensembles, including Beethoven Quartet who premiered most of these quartets. Vengerov's recording of Violin Concerto No.1 is not on Spotify USA, so I "settled" for David Oistrakh.

You are an idiot. Please die.The reason you prefer John Williams to Shostakovich is because you an uncultured dimwit.Shostakovich was capable of taking a musical idea and creating something interesting, whether a string quartet, symphony or concerto. The music never stops moving and it never loses interest. John Williams, on the other hand, though also capable of creating gorgeous and memorable themes, takes his one musical idea and does nothing with it other than modulating to a new, or minor key. He never incorporates other ideas and is lucky that the movie can distract from the monotony of his mediocre orchestration and poor use of the theme.Movie music is the ‘pop’ of Classical Music. It’s usually beautiful and catchy, but actually also quite boring.Shostakovich is world renowned and certainly stands on the same pedestal as Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky (the list goes on).He has an instantly recognisable sound of his own and his music is full of depth and meaning. Show some respect.Dumbass.

I think there's nothing wrong with imitating, or repackaging other composers' musical language, that's what most classical composers and all pop musicians do. But personally I can't take John Williams, he ruined Indiana Jones for me, next time I will try to watch it with a Stockhausen soundtrack...

Avant-garde music, by definition, is not for mass distribution, thus should not to be compared with Star Wars.

About Me

Maybe everything that can be done HAS been done.
Maybe we are at a crossroads where art has exhausted itself as an imitation of life.
Maybe it is time, therefore, to allow life to become an imitation of art.
The art is in the living within our personal relationships: to reach out and touch another human soul as the great masters have touched us all.

If you want to share your playlist or just say hello, leave a comment or send me an email by clicking the image above. Thanks.

Greetings from the blogger

Hi everybody,

I am Chinese, 26 years old, have been listening to classical music for 6 years. I'm not a musician but work in the music industry, though one of my favourite quotes is Ives' "the birth of art will take place at the moment in which the last man, who is willing to make a living out of art is gone and gone forever."

In the beginning I saw the film Amadeus and was awed, then I began to build my collection started from Naxos' Mozart piano concertos. On my 20th birthday I got Bernstein's Mahler cycle with NYPO on Sony. Since then Mahler's nostalgia for a lost or never existed homeworld always moves me, you know that China is still going through the pain of a quick-paced modernization and I feel that things are changing so fast that it is almost impossible to identify myself with anything. Not many great classical concerts here in Beijing, last year I was lucky enough to attend Abbado's Mahler 4th and it will always be a very precious memory.

Recently I started to use the instant online streaming music service Spotify, it has a huge classical library, but it seems that very few people listen to classical on it. There are many Spotify playlist sharing sites, and many of them don't even have a classical section. So I started my own blog.

Besides the playlists I post, when I mention artists or recordings in the posts, most of the time I will link them to their Spotify ablums, so you can click through if you are interested.

I look forward to exchanging playlists and thoughts on classical music and other arts with you.